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These are notes from a class that I taught a few years ago on how to go about reading source material and translating it to practical knowledge. Learning how to fence from a book is difficult. The class was meant to give an overview of the process of reconstructing a fencing system from a historical text. The process is divided into four parts: learning the techniques, understanding theory, training the system, and refining your interpretations. Learning the Techniques Read the entire book, several times. Develop a working interpretation of the mechanical details from the book You may need to import knowledge from other books or disciplines You won’t get it perfect. You can iterate on it as you understand the material better Fencing masters then disagreed then just as much as they do now. It’s more important to understand the problem that each was trying to solve and how their solutions address it then it is to try to figure out who was right or wrong. The basic movements serve as building blocks for putting together actions, but they are rarely spelled out in a text so they may need to be reverse-engineered. When reading a plate, it’s just as important to look at the actions of the fencer who was hit, as it is to look at the actions of the fencer who “won.” Example from Capoferro’s plate 7: “As the explanation of the following illustration, you (D) gain the blade of your opponent (C) to the inside. He performs a […]

Time, distance, and speed are all intricately interconnected in fencing. It is impossible to work on one of these elements in complete isolation. For the purposes of this article, though, I will be focusing on time (tempo). Tempo can be understood in a number of ways in fencing. It is often described as being analogous to “rhythm,” like watching two dancers moving in harmony. Alternately, sometimes the emphasis is placed on the way tempo can be thought of as a measure of movement (one movement equals one tempo, two movements, two tempi, etc…). Tempo is also often reduced to speed (I must have a faster tempo than my opponent to succeed). However, these explanations of tempo each present only part of the picture. The broader concept of tempo is primarily about determining the best moment to make an attack. Rhythm is an aspect of tempo because detecting (or forcing) a rhythm in the opponent’s movements makes it easier catch her off guard with an attack. Similarly, quantifying each movement as a tempo reminds us that every action a fencer makes is potentially an opportunity for an opponent to strike, and that complicated, longer actions provide more opportunities for a successful attack. Speed reminds us that we must be quick in order to successfully seize those opportunities. Tempo encompasses all of these concepts and can be summed up by the question “When is it time to go?” From a historical perspective, there are a number of articles, such as Tom Leoni’s […]